The printer beeped and the paper slid out. Full of wonderful sentences and captivating pictures that me and my peers had just typed up a minute ago. My heel boots made me sound like a teacher walking down the hallway. I bet the 7th graders in Math were pretty scared since they were always off task every time Mrs. Gates left the room to get some coffee. I waved at Mr. Chagnon who was getting the door stopper from under the door out so he could close it for testing.


My long black hair bounced up and down as I made my way to the technology room. I opened the door with my left hand. In the other, held the holy, sacred weekly school newspaper.


“Howd’s it look-” Mrs. Kim put her hands over her mouth before she could say anything else. She snatched the paper from me in a non-curtly way and began jumping. Soon enough I found myself jumping with her.


“Gabe,” she called out while walking towards him “you know what to do.”


He nodded and shot up grabbing the paper from her hand and rushed past me. He swung the door open and I followed him until he got outside into the hallway. I peeked my head out, watching him speedwalk all the way down to the printer room, where he would make over one hundred copies of our masterpiece.


Iya popped out of nowhere in front of me and started screaming excitedly. I jolted back and saw her clearly. I got up quickly and began screaming with her, switching from foot to foot jumping. We held each other's hands in front of us like little 6 year olds. Mrs. Kim stepped in.


“Aren’t you excited?!” she giggled.


“Um, yeah! Obviously!” Iya laughed and we all began to laugh together.


Iya was the editor, aka the boss and also aka my best friend. I was one of the two writers and Gabe was the photographer. We also had a layout artist named Taylor and of course Mrs. Kim, our advisor.


“Jayden, you’ve really outdone yourself this time!” her eyes traveled on the third page of the newspaper, bouncing from caption to caption, picture to picture.


“Thanks…” I rubbed my shoulder feeling goosebumps arise on my milk chocolate brown skin. I hoped that the warmth from me rubbing would make the goosebumps go down. In Mrs. Kim’s room it was always cold, especially at the back. I had always come two minutes early to this elective whenever I could so I could get a spot near the front. The desks we’re in a 2 by 4 line up, meaning there were 8 desks. Why an extra two? Well, Sometimes I like to spy on certain people to see how they’re doing.


Iya looked up and smiled at me with her always perfect genuine smile. She has never given a fake smile in her life. It’s rather a smile, or a get-the-heck-out-of-my-face kind of facial expression. Most of the time it was smiling thanks to her bubbly artistic personality. She let me take the newspaper and waked over to Helen, the other writer who was almost never here since she was a cheerleader, to congratulate her on all the hard work that was never even put into the mix.


“Helen, I’m also very proud of you!” She held her hand out for Helen to shake. Helen responded with a delightful firm handshake.


“Thank you!” she grinned. I scrunched up my nose seeing Iya proud of her, and even more at the fact that Helen was letting Iya bathe her in compliments.


The school bell rang as Gabe came back to the room, looking mighty uncomfortable.


“Hey, you okay Gabe?” Mrs. Kim asked.


I saw the answer in Gabe’s eyes the moment his eyes shifted towards me for a second, and I knew Helen and Taylor saw it too.


Gabe had been roughed up, badly. If you don’t know what I mean by roughed up, I mean the type of beat down where you beat someone to the ground and help them back up to their feet only to beat them back down again.


“I’m alright.” Gabe said as he laid the extra sheets down on one of the desks and shuffled out of the room, leaving all of his memories scattered to be picked into different minds, guessing with only one clue to what might have happened.